Bill to Boost Support in Divorce Cases

In a sweeping legislative victory, a bill by Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson giving homemakers in long-term marriages a better chance of extending spousal support has been signed into law.

The act, signed by Gov. Gray Davis over the weekend, exempts marriages lasting 10 years or more that end in divorce from a standard that spousal support be limited to one-half the length of the marriage.

Although judges already have wide discretion to set the length of support payments, many are swayed to follow the half-the-marriage guideline, said Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat whose district includes portions of Ventura County.

By essentially eliminating that standard for long-term marriages, judges will be forced to consider a variety of other factors in establishing the duration of support, Jackson said.

Other criteria to be considered include the age, health and potential earning capacity of the spouse receiving support and the person’s standard of living during the marriage.

“My goal is to give judges the discretion to ensure someone who is in a long-term marriage--who stayed out of the work force to care for her husband and children--that they are not going to end up living in poverty at the end of their lives,” Jackson said.

Davis signed the legislation, AB 391, over the opposition of fathers’ rights advocates, who argued that the current standard was reasonable and that open-ended payments would enable former spouses to depend too heavily on the payments. Women currently are recipients in the majority of cases in which spousal support is awarded.

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The Coalition of Parent Support, in comments to a Senate committee reviewing the bill, said the legislation does not consider the fact that it is the woman who decides to end the marriage in many divorces. The law also assumes that women are unable to support themselves, according to the group’s comments.

“[The bill] appears to emanate from the assumption that women are less capable of making informed lifestyle choices than men,” wrote the fathers’ rights group. “We reject this thinking and would urge you to consider the damage that its message does to women struggling to break through such glass ceilings as may still exist in our society.”

But Jackson and a wide coalition of women’s groups who supported the bill, including California NOW and the Older Women’s League of California, say the gender inequalities that exist in society are one reason why the legislation is needed.

In many marriages, it is the woman who forgoes a career to stay home and raise the couple’s children. And those who do work are often paid less than their former husbands, Jackson said.

Under the current standard, a 50-year-old woman who has been married 25 years and never worked outside the home could be cut off of support payments at 62, just as she is entering old age, the legislator said.

“People who have skills and a college degree might welcome that opportunity, but many women find it very difficult,” she said.

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Judge Melinda Johnson, who presides over divorce cases in Ventura County, said the new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, will have little impact in her courtroom, because she does not give the half-the-marriage standard any more weight than other factors when making a support order.

“If you are a judge who has relied on it to a very large degree, it will have a big impact,” Johnson said. “But I use it as one of several criteria. . . . I judge everything on a case-by-case basis.”

Thousand Oaks divorce attorney Cathleen Drury said the change essentially gives attorneys more ammunition when asking courts for longer support payments. An ex-wife seeking lifetime spousal support, for instance, no longer must overcome her ex-husband’s argument that the law tells courts to consider limiting payments, Drury said.

“It’s a strong argument that you can quote to the court,” she said. “I think it’s appropriate. It takes away an unreasonable expectation of the supporting spouse that they will have to make payments for only so long.”

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Time-limited spousal support gained momentum in 1996 when a bill by then-Assemblyman Charles Calderon, a Montebello Democrat, was signed into law. Calderon’s legislation mandated that courts consider the goal of becoming self-supporting as one of the factors to consider when ordering spousal support.

Spouses receiving payments were urged to become self-sufficient within a “reasonable length of time,” which was defined as one-half the length of the marriage. Additionally, spouses were warned by courts that if they did not make a good-faith effort to become self-supporting within that time frame, they could see their support reduced or terminated.

Jackson’s bill eliminates the so-called Gavron warning for marriages longer than 10 years. The court is instead allowed to advise recipients of spousal support that they should make reasonable efforts to provide for their own financial needs.